In applications using a media gateway to facilitate coding, decoding, and transcoding of data, such as Voice Over IP (VOIP) communications, the media gateway accesses a variety of coder/decoders (codecs). For this reason, media gateways typically contain Digital Signal Processor (DSP) chips having firmware capable of implementing multiple codecs.
Some conventional media gateways include voice server cards, where each of the voice server cards has a multitude of DSPs implemented thereon. Each of the DSPs are received from a vendor having firmware to implement certain codecs and a certain number of those codecs. Since the codecs are implemented using firmware, they are not readily changed, thereby making codecs a quasi-hardware feature. Development of new firmware to implement new codecs on a DSP may be expensive.
During design time or even at deployment for a media gateway, engineers typically do not know which specific codecs will be in demand by end-users, nor do the engineers know the quantity of demand. The engineers make a best guess about codec demand. However, in some cases, some users of the media gateway may want access to a new codec that the media gateway currently does not have installed. In some of these cases, adding the new codec may require adding new DSP hardware to the voice server cards of the media gateway. However, it can be expensive to modify voice server cards of the media gateway to hold new DSPs. Accordingly, it is desirable to find a cost effective way to extend the DSP and codec functionality of existing media gateways.